Difficult Decision Making for Leaders

On March 19th, 2020, California, America’s most populous state, became the first to order all residents to stay home. Other states quickly followed the action.

The orders were given in order to control the spread of the Covid-19. At the same time, many people are now unable to work, and many business owners are unable to receive income while their businesses are forced to close. Even taking into consideration the bill signed by Trump, support remains limited for personal finances; the bill will not suffice for many people.

Right now, Americans are faced with two prevailing opinions from two very different leaders; President Trump, who wishes to open businesses no later than Easter (4/12), and Bill Gates, who believes that America needs 6 to 10 weeks of “extreme shutdown” in order to properly gain a handle on Covid-19; this would mean no non-essential businesses would open until the end of April or the end of May.

Using Polarity Thinking to plot these two opinions in the image below, the “and” in the middle of the image doesn’t make sense since the two opinions are mutually exclusive. It seems that we have to choose one over another as a solution.

When we look more deeply, the question is really not about the timeline “Stay at Home”. Rather, it’s about focusing on controlling COVID-19 while also considering economic recovery (shown in the image below).

Is it possible to simultaneously control the spread of the COVID-19 virus while also allowing some people to start working in the non-essential business?